Girls' sports options to increase in Worcester

WORCESTER 
Female high school students in the city should have more sports to choose from next year in the wake of a Title IX complaint and follow-up survey about sports participation.

In November 2010, the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C., filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights alleging that Worcester and 11 other districts were not meeting the requirements of Title IX, because the selection of interscholastic sports in the districts' high schools did not amount to equal opportunity for girls.

In the fall, Worcester schools gave every secondary school student, male and female, a survey about what sports they participated in and which they would have liked to participate in. While it isn't entirely clear how seriously some students took the survey — two boys, for instance, said they'd like to pursue bull fighting — the results show that there are sports students would like to join that are not offered, are not widely known about or do not have enough spots available.

The sports that most interested high school girls were gymnastics, which is not offered, and which 85 girls said they were interested in; swimming, which 60 girls said they were interested in and which is offered as a coed, citywide team; and basketball, which 47 girls said they were interested in and which is offered at all of the city's high schools, but only at the varsity and junior varsity levels. The district cut many freshmen sports for boys and girls several years ago to save money, according to a letter the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights sent to the school district this month.

A letter from the Office of Civil Rights to the public schools this month states that since the survey found there was unmet interest in athletics, the district “will be obligated to offer additional athletic opportunities to female students” by the next competitive season for the particular sport.

What those sports will be remains to be seen, said David Perda, the district's chief research and accountability officer. The district will first try to figure out which schools have the biggest gap between the percent of female students and female athletes and will likely target their efforts there, he said.

Figures for the 2009-2010 school year show that the biggest gap was at Worcester Technical High School, where girls made up 50.8 percent of the student body but only 35.5 percent of the student athletes. This year, that school offers 11 teams for boys and 10 for girls.

Worcester Athletic Director David Shea referred questions about Title IX to Mr. Perda.

Superintendent Melinda J. Boone said in a press release that the district “is committed to providing all students with equal opportunities to participate in athletics” and noted that the benefits of athletics extend to academics and life beyond school.

Neena K. Chaudhry, director of equal opportunities in athletics at the National Women's Law Center, said those benefits are the reason the center pursues complaints like the one it filed against Worcester and the other cities.

“The reason we care about this is because the impact that this has on girls,” Ms. Chaudhry said.

“Title IX's been around for 40 years, and these schools have had these obligations all along and really should be continuously monitoring their compliance and making sure that they are not discriminating,” she said. Many districts, she said, also lack a process for adding a new sport if students are interested.

Mr. Perda noted that the monitoring piece was at best out of date. Much of the team information was kept on paper, not centralized in a database. “One of the things that this whole experience brought to light is we need to have a better way for the district to monitor our compliance with this law,” he said.

The original complaint against Worcester was part of a dozen complaints the National Women's Law Center filed, one in each of the 12 Office for Civil Rights zones. At the time, Ms. Chaudhry said, “These 12 are not necessarily the worst in the country… They're sort of examples of a much larger problem.”

The other 12, which included Chicago and New York, have gone through a similar process to Worcester, but she said the investigation was particularly thorough here.